And so, I have sometimes struggled to enjoy it in the same way as I enjoy written fiction with the same style of storytelling. The longer I spent in James' personal hellscape, the more I could accept it as the video game equivalent of Alisdair Gray's Lanark, but I also don't have the patience to analyse every detail within its 16 to 20-hour story, as some will. And ultimately, I can't help but feel underwhelmed by how much its sacred history has chained this remake down.

Iceborne is an essential expansion for a game that is paradoxically both enormous and niche. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It has a few decent puzzles, all of them boringly repeated. It looks lovely, when it remembers to, but mostly doesn’t. It moves and controls wonderfully, but that’s not so great a feature when what you’re moving and controlling is so bland. I found no pathos, no meaningful peril, no attachment to the ever-dying yet always-living character, and ultimately, no purpose.

Persona 4 is a twisting tale of dreams gone rogue in a town sapped of purpose. It brings personal demons to life in gaudy but plausible ways, and uses this to rejuvenate the dog-eared framework of a town-and-dungeon fantasy RPG. Unceremonious as it is, the PC port leaves all of that peculiar magic intact. It’s just a shame that the insight and empathy on show here doesn’t extend to everybody.

I am in real danger of sounding ungrateful, because jeopardy was something I wanted more of in Gris. It's present in Neva, but the nuts and bolts need tightening before it hits an Ori And The Blind Forest, game of the year, orchestral tour sort of level of greatness. That aside - which in fairness is quite a big "that" in an action platformer - I think Neva is a step above Gris. The experience as a whole is engaging and bittersweet enough that I'll even forgive the 'it was all a dream' switcheroo.

If you have never before visited a Sunless place, take to the Skies immediately. [RPS Bestest Bests]

There’s a confidence to this game. It doesn’t need a comfortingly familiar grand campaign or a traditional structure because it has an identity separate from that of Total War; an identity where a scripted narrative can work, or where starkly different factions are more important than balance. It’s an exceedingly strong beginning to this chapter of the Warhammer trilogy and is a strong contender for the best game in the series. [RPS Recommended]

The existence of Spider-Man: Miles Morales is kind of shame in the context of this review. Marvel's Spider-Man is a great game, and this version comes packaged with all the extras. Were it not for the existence of Miles Morales, I'd have no qualms recommending you get this Spider-Man right now. But I am cursed with the knowledge that Miles Morales exists, is a bit tighter, cleaner, and more dynamic, and is coming to PC very soon. I don't think you'd regret getting Marvel's Spider-Man - it is, I must emphasise again, a quality game - but, look. If you can only get one.

WoL is most easily described as a comedy game, and though it is indeed a prime-cut ribtickler, that can be a backhanded compliment – as if jokes are all it has. WoL does something far more accomplished, far more rare, which is to be joyful. [RPS Recommended]

Unless you plan on speedrunning the game, Iconoclasts has relatively limited replay value. Still, in the end Iconoclasts wasn’t quite what I expected, but I greatly enjoyed my time with it, and would recommend it to any platformer fan.

The reality is that I've had a great time over the past week, learning routes and outpacing strangers. I also know that I've barely scratched the surface of the kinds of times more adept players will achieve, and hardly touched the mid-air trick system at all. I will continue to hit the slopes for the fun of attaining that snowy flow state, even if only for brief moments before the tree of frustration clobbers me in the face again.

After the initial thrill of learning to control your machine and kitting it out with bolder weapons, and the bombast of the power fantasy, ultimately one pitiful casualty or sacrifice follows another. Perhaps the repetitive AC battles and the waste pile of deadly hardware you accumulate are designed to bring home a gut-wrenching nihilism. If not, Armored Core VI is a frequently brilliant action game that makes the most of its mechs, but also curiously at odds with itself and a little overstuffed.

Turbo Overkill is action and style cranked up several notches higher than it has any right to be, with levels that really let your chainsaw leg sing with a brrr. But with its relentless pacing comes a frustration in how long it takes for Johnny to truly get going, while its constant barrage of baddies coalesce into a samey red noise that makes you desperate for a bit of creative downtime. Still, if you'd like to coat vents and ceilings with copious entrails over the course of, say, 15 hours, then Turbo Overkill could absolutely be for you. Just play it in bursts, otherwise you might burn out quickly.

You could start playing this today, an hour at a time before bed, and you’d still be playing when the snow melted in Spring. Some portions of that adventure are better than others. Some are downright ugly. With those caveats, in its latest (and possibly definitive) incarnation, Dragon Quest III is a colourful, adventurous romp of wild goose chases, indistinct but compelling rumours, and tactical positioning: a miniature fantasy made grand.

More so than other games, my experience with Mystery Dungeon does feel like a case of the reviewer’s curse; the dreaded roguelike embargo. Played one run at a time as a cosy evening ritual, and the luster is going to stay on a lot longer. Still, that sense of fickleness - of having little agency how your runs turn out in the face of random drops - does feel like it’s baked in. Perhaps that’s the sticking point for me, having to deal with untameable chaos lurking underneath such inviting presentation. Perhaps I should let go and allow the winds of fate to carry me. It’s just not easy when they keep knocking me right back to the bottom of a mountain, and making me trust them again if I want to get back up.

Rise is a strong and confident step forward for the new series, but I’m still unconvinced it’s heading in a direction that I particularly like. This new Lara Croft is in danger of becoming a character constantly in the act of becoming something with no clear idea of how to portray that thing once she arrives.

Part of the reason it's so easy to play hours of Diablo IV in one go, staring unblinkingly at the centre third of your screen until you feel your eyeballs turn into raisins, is that it's very well made. The different synergies of all the abilities and spells is extremely impressive, and the game kicks up a bit when you get your ultimate spells and special abilities. I got the ability to summon, rather than a team of skeletons, one huge Big Daddy-esque monster in their place - and even that came in three variants for extra build customisation. There are main missions, side missions, timed world events, an optional currency to buy mystery weapons, and hours-long dungeons to get Aspects for your character - themselves another optional addition to apply to your gear. It's a game that puts no friction between itself, and you mainlining it for an entire day. Whether you'll feel good afterwards is another question.

None of this diminishes the fact that I’ve had a wonderful time playing Total War: Warhammer and am far from finished with it. But the more I play, the more convinced I become that this is a game that makes a devil’s bargain. It feels exactly the way a Warhammer-themed Total War game should feel, and creates tons of dramatic battles and storylines over the course of each campaign. But to reliably generate all that excitement and tension, it secretly disconnects many of the strategic systems that hold good Total War games together. So do you want a good Warhammer game, or a good Total War game? Because I’m less and less convinced that you’ll find both inside Total Warhammer.

I was in it for the plinkety-plink rush of clattering into a huge pile of gems. I was in it for the five item chest boogie, the mindless yet mindful monster shepherding, the giant meteors and the rainbow scythes. Those are all still here, and you can push into further and deadlier territory than ever before, especially if you get far enough to unlock the endless mode, or the modifier that lets you keep upgrading weapons past their usual point. Vampire Survivors is a bigger, better playground now - albeit one with a bodyguard blocking the final set of swings.

So, I guess Sunbreak is maybe a little less grand than I expected? The new monsters are neat, as are the excellent follower quests, but as a whole Sunbreak feels a whole lot like Rise with a bunch of quality of life features thrown in. The true appeal, really, lies in that advanced difficulty. If you’re desperate for a challenge, to face off against monsters whose ferocity finally matches their stature, to use their bones for fancy new armour sets that celebrate those achievements, then Sunbreak is for you...Still, I liked Sunbreak a hell of a lot.

For the most part, though, Monster Hunter Rise is another stonking addition to the series, and in my books a more than worthy successor to Monster Hunter: World. There's a generous and playful sense of freedom here that keeps combat and exploration feeling fresh, and the momentum of its hunting-led missions means you're rarely spinning your wheels as you seek out that last elusive armour part. It's kept me playing much longer than I ever did with World, and I can't wait to see how it develops with its imminent Sunbreak expansion later this summer. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Yakuza’s debut on PC is long overdue, but you couldn’t have asked for a stronger start.

As well as being a superb detective game, Her Story might be the best FMV game ever made.

Despite my complaints, this is more than a triumphant return – it’s an improvement on the original in almost every way, and as close to a masterpiece as anything I’ve played this year. If it had a plot as powerful as its setting, any doubts I have that it might be remembered as a masterpiece would vanish.

Ultimately, I think my disappointment stems more from the fact that we just can't go to town with with Mass Effect's PC settings here, and make it look as 'legendary' as its remastered subtitle implies. After all, part of the reason why a lot of us play on PC in the first place rather than on console is so we can really push the boat out on games like this, precisely because of our more powerful hardware. Alas, Mass Effect Legendary Edition appears to be very much a 'one size fits all' kind of remaster. Bioware have put a lot of work into making all three games look as new and shiny as they do, but at the same time I can't help but feel like the PC version in particular could have been shown a little bit more love. [PC Impressions]

I'm not yet deep enough to know whether Arc Raiders will feel this compelling at hour 100 or whether, in two months' time, I'll still be dreaming about it. For now, all I know is that its metallic hooks are in me, and I cannot stop playing.

Earlier, I said Wolfenstein 2 is a hair’s breadth away from being one of my favourite singleplayer action games of all time. The hair seems to have become much thicker as I think back, but the truth is that if there were even a handful of first-person shooters this strange and spectacular released in any given year, I’d barely find time to play anything else. In a week that has seen speculation about the future of this type of big budget singleplayer game, for all its flaws, this is a reminder of how powerful and vital they can be. [RPS Recommended]

I'd hesitate to renew that Nioh 2 prescription if you're someone who's already invested many hours into the PS4 version. Apart from the DLC and the swanky performance upgrades, you aren't really getting anything actually new (apart from an RGB Valve helmet, I suppose). Having said that, I think Nioh 2: CE is absolutely worth it if you're fresh to Nioh and like crunchy, combo-laden combat. Even moreso if you love stats and skill-trees on top of that.